


The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Clarke Griffin

by AshVee



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season 2 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 20:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7655338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshVee/pseuds/AshVee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anya was too late in the tunnel, and Clarke was taken back into the medical wing, this time on the other side of the dialysis catheters. A lark does not sing behind bars, and the spirit that is Clarke Griffin can only survive for so long before it is simply no longer there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Death of a Lark

**Author's Note:**

> A little season two "what if" piece.

Clarke felt the hands close around her arms, pulling her forward, toward that old, rusted door. Toward the clinical light and cleanliness beyond. Toward...

"Clarke!" Her name was shouted somewhere behind her, and one of the guards turned, dropping her elbow and running down the hall. The door was open. She fought, lashing out with an elbow and catching her guard in the temple. He shouted at her, and she was able to see the guard that had left her running down the tunnel, Anya, feral and slack jawed, staring at her a long moment before turning and running.

They wouldn't catch her. The grounder leader, even weak, was more than capable of holding her own, and Clarke took a sick sense of pride at that. Anya would go free. Clarke had at least robbed the Mount Weather survivors of one of their blood cows. She was snatched again and drug by her neck and hair back through the door, lashing out with her feet and fists, gripping one of the face masks and ripping it off. The man's screams shouldn't have sounded so sweet as he crumpled to the ground and screamed out his pain at the radiation eating away at his skin.

She caught one of the others in the stomach with a knee, but by the time he'd dropped her hair, another had gripped her bicep and pulled hard, tearing at the sutures in her forearm and wrenching it behind her back. Something sharp exploded at the back of her head, and that was the last thing she knew for an unknown amount of time.

-RP: The Death of a Lark-

"Ms. Griffin." She heard her name repeated, and struggled to clear the cotton fuzz from her mind. "Ms. Griffin, I know that you are awake."

She forced her eyes open and stared at the grey walls that seemed to sway slightly. A piece of her hand refused to move from her eyes, and reached up to move it only to find her hands were bound above her head. Or, as the world sharpened around her, below her head.

"What-"

"It might take you a few minutes, to bring everything back, but I assure you, Ms. Griffin, you know where you are and you know what is going to happen." That was President Wallace, and if she craned her head to the left, she could see his alligator shoes, shining even in the dim light. Her forearm ached as she swayed upside down. It had been sutured closed and bandaged again, and there was an IV line below it, red with her blood.

"You're using my blood to transfuse with," she said, voice hoarse.

"You're a bright mind; it's a tragedy that we had to come to this," Wallace said, stepping around to stare down at her, his face drawn down in a morose frown, as if someone had taken away something that he'd wanted.

"You're the one kidnapping grounders for their blood," Clarke said, trying to ignore the whooshing sound in her ears. She shook her head, trying to clear it enough to focus on her surroundings and make a plan.

"I really wanted you to be part of our new generation," Wallace said. "I had hoped that you might take a position on our medical staff here. It would be beneficial to have someone of your genetic resistance for recruitment."

"You're going to have to kill me," she said. "You're not going to convert me."

"I'm not looking to convert you, Clarke. I'm just here to pay my respects and to tell you that it didn't have to be this way. This isn't want we wanted." She almost believed him as he stood there, his eyes running down her arm to the plastic tubing.

"I'm not going to sit here and be your blood bank," she said, meeting his eyes the best she could upside down. "You'd better just kill me."

"We waste nothing here, Clarke," Wallace said, turning on his heels, the faint click of his wooden soles sounding on the concrete floor. Clarke let her head fall back, staring straight ahead at the blank wall. She hung there, upside down and drifting, for several hours before she was lowered bonelessly to the floor and drug to an empty cage. The door was shut and padlocked as she lay curled into a ball at the bottom.

They felt her alone long enough each time to gain some of her fight back, and she would kick and thrash against firm, clinical hands until they had to knock her out. She lost days that way, she was sure, hanging upside down or laying unconscious at the bottom of her cage. She'd made six scratches against the floor of her cage, one for each time they'd drug her from the collection area to her cell. She thought there were at least two days between each collection, but she couldn't be sure. They fed them regularly, but she'd slept through meals.

She'd scratched eleven lines in the floor the first time she had an opportunity to make good on her promise. The physician who'd drug her back to her cell had hung the lock in place and had become distracted with the beeping of one of the machines before she'd closed it. Clarke supposed she looked as helpless as she'd felt, but she'd managed to pull herself silently past the door and stole the lock from the latch. She'd been unable to pull herself to her feet, but the woman had returned not moment later, trying to force her back into the cell. Clarke waited until the woman was behind her, trying to drag her backward when Clarke lashed out, striking the woman in the temple with the heavy metal lock.

The woman crumpled behind her, bouncing her head off of the concrete.

"Sorry," Clarke mumbled, using the cage to haul herself to her shaking legs. Wrapped in the white linen and netting, she shook with each step she took down the line of cages, wild eyes watching her as she went. She made it halfway to the door before she collapsed, shouting in frustration.

She crawled the rest of the way to the door, trying to force the heavy iron thing open without success. She struck it with her fists, groaning in anger. Tears of frustration stung her eyes until one of the orderlies came to check on their missing physician. She'd been knocked out by the door that time, and the last thing she thought as the butt of the gun came down on her temple was that the repeated head injuries were going to start doing something one of these days.

-RP: The Death of a Lark-

She'd stopped carving little marks into the floor after her fourth failed escape attempt, and they had stopped letting her off the machine until she passed out. It took them long enough, really, but by then, she'd lost so much of her strength that it wouldn't have mattered. Her legs wouldn't support her even after the two days of rest they gave her, and when she looked at her arms, she could see where the atrophied muscles inserted into her bones.

Medically, she knew that to go from where she'd been physically to where she was wouldn't take very long. It could happen easily in a month, more than easily. It didn't make the fact that she couldn't support her own weight any less difficult to swallow. She isn't sure how long its been when she's hauled from her cage by two orderlies and propped up in a wheel chair. They wrap a warm blanket around her and take her to a sterile while room, where the two men strip her and wash her with clinical hands. She's wrapped in a robe and put back in the wheel chair before she's rolled down into the dining hall, which is empty except for Wallace who stands and smiles at her when she is rolled into the room.

"Clarke," he says, voice pleasant. He nods to the orderlies and takes her wheelchair in his own hands, easing her to the table, where a bowl of soup smelling vaguely like meat is placed in front of her. It turns her stomach as she eats it, but her hands shake so badly that they spill most of it into the table cloth. It reminds her that she needs more than the thin broth that they're provided, so she stomachs as much as she can get to her mouth.

"I had hoped we could speak," Wallace said after she finished. Their bowls were cleared, and he leaned forward on the table, looking at her over steepled fingers.

"I have nothing to say to you," Clarke manages, though her voice is harsh and crackling from disuse or misuse, she's not sure which.

"I think, perhaps, you might change your mind," Wallace says, looking at her with a clinical eye that softened nearly immediately. "I can make this all stop, Clarke, if you cooperate with a few of my questions." Clarke does not respond, more because she's too tired from her journey and less because she wants to be obstinate.

"Ask," she finally manages after he just looks at her for five long minutes.

"It's rather simple," Wallace said. "All I want to know is a little information about who might have been on the Arc stations that fell to the earth."

"No," she said, voice as firm as she could make it. "No survivors. Doesn't matter."

"Then perhaps, I can exchange some information for what you might have. There were survivors, both from the fall of the stations and the war you had with the native populace." And if that didn't spark her attention, nothing ever would again. She forced herself to sit upright, her shoulders as square as she could make them, and stared at him.

"You lied," she said at length.

"A leader does many things they aren't proud of for their people, Clarke," Wallace said. "Your people have become at home here. The rest of your people could do the same, within reason. But I need to know that they will be receptive to being brought in."

"I wasn't," Clarke said.

"And look where that got the both of us," Wallace said, voice sad as if he truly regretted the outcome. Maybe he did, Clarke thought, but that didn't stop him from carrying out his crimes.

"I'm not about to tell you what to say to bring more people here to end up like me," she said, proud of herself for being able to string so many words together. Wallace's lips turned down in a deep scowl.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Clarke," he said, nodding to someone over her shoulder. "I will see you in a week, and we'll see if your thoughts have changed." She was pulled backward in the wheelchair, redressed by those clinical hands, and put back in her cell. She hung upside down the next day until she passed out. When she woke, she was hung up again. And again. And again.

She only knew a week had passed because she woke sitting in that same wheelchair, at the table, with another bowl of soup in front of her. She was unable to feed herself, and only took the offered spoonfuls of brother from Wallace because she couldn't remember eating since the last time she'd sat in front of him.

The broth revolted in her stomach, but she clamped her mouth shut, refusing to allow it to escape. It might be the last food she got for another week, and it would stay down.

"Have you changed your mind, Clarke?" Wallace asked. She raised her head at that, scowled and closed her eyes, letting her head fall back to the side. She heard him sigh. When she woke again, she was hanging upside down, and she only managed to remain conscious for a few moments before her world bled to nothingness.

Her third dinner with Wallace went differently.

"I have good news for you, Clarke," he said, sitting down across from her as he had so many times. She didn't have the energy to ask, and he knew it. "We've retrieved three of your people." She let herself look at him then, looking for some sign of deception. "I can see that you're not going to believe me, so I've arranged for a little tour."

He pushed her wheelchair to an elevator and down several long halls until the familiar isolation wing came into view. She was eased along several empty rooms to the very end, where three doors were closed. The class was opaque, and she could see nothing through it.

"We've made some changes, since last you were in here," he said, recognizing her look of confusion at the glass. "Can't have anyone attacking my people."

He pushed her up to a long, mirror that ran several feet along the wall. He pressed a button along the wall, and the reflective property disappeared. She was glad when it did, as it let her pretend like she hadn't seen her reflection. Inside, it was fairly dark, but on the cot she could make out the hunkered form of someone sleeping. Brown hair fell over a pale face and eyes large even behind closed eyelids.

"This one they call John Murphy," Wallace said from behind him. "Not as smart as you were, I'm afraid. Rather foul mouthed." Clarke let herself sink back into the chair. Murphy would do her no good, especially asleep and on the other side of a one way window.

She was pushed along to another door. "Finn Collins is a bit of a different story. He was pleasant when we brought him in." The mirror in front of the new room cleared and she looked through to a familiar sleeping face, turned toward the door as it dozed. Finn. Something ached in her at that. Finn would love this place, deep beneath the earth.

"The last was rather quiet, though I'm sure you'll be able to tell me if he's usually that way," Wallace said, pushing her again. Mr. Blake is a bit older than the rest of you, isn't he?"

When that mirror cleared, the room was well lit. The bed was empty, and Bellamy was sitting on the floor on the far wall, staring resolutely at the mirror, as though he could see through to the other side. He had a firm set to his lips, neither positive or negative, and a fire in his eyes that she remembered so well that it was frightening.

"Bell," she managed, trying to reach up with one of her shaking hands. She made it to the bottom of the window, bracing her fingers against the lip there.

"He can't see you, my dear," Wallace said sadly. "Unfortunately, due to your behavior, none of your people can see you again, but if you cooperate now, I can make one of these rooms yours for the rest of your natural life."

Something about the fire in Bellamy's eyes, the fact that he and Finn and even Murphy were there and alive and not burned to death somewhere by the drop ship, gave her strength. She let her hand fall away from the mirror and closed her eyes against the image of him there, on the other side.

"No," she said simply. Wallace wheeled her back to medical without another word.

There were not dinners with Wallace for a very long time, and she had long ago given up on anything but dying in the small cage.

-RP: Death of a Lark-

Clarke woke to gunshots, several of them that came in quick succession like the popping of fireworks she'd seen on old movies as a child. Someone beneath in medical was screaming, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Even if she did, she wouldn't be able to do much but push herself into a leaning position against the wall of her cage.

The new grounders shifted in their cages, two of them speaking to each other in low, hushed tones. They would learn, she thought as she closed her eyes against the continued pop, pop, popping of the guns below her. They seemed closer, and the sound echoed off of the walls. Someone shouted something, but the words were garbled and meant nothing to her. The door screeched as it was forced open, and she sighed, folding into herself.

"Go," she heard a firm, masculine voice say. She tried not to move, not to even breathe. If they thought she was still too weak to be conscious, maybe they'd save her the rack for a few more blessed hours.

"Open it," the voice demanded, closer this time. Her cage door have a faint hiss as it slid open, and she sighed, giving up her game. She didn't have the strength to open her eyes. Another loud pop came from right above her head, and one of the grounders screamed out a guttural cry. Were they killing them? Making room for fresher bodies?

"God, Clarke," a voice said, familiar and shaking. "Come on, Princess, come one." She knew that nickname. She'd been the Princess, hadn't she? Hadn't someone with that voice called her that once? "Please, Princess, just open your eyes. Please." And strong hands were pulling her from the cage, gentle and shaking, and sitting her upright, calloused fingers running across her cheek and down her jaw to her pulse. "Thank-" A sob cut off whatever he'd been going to say, and she felt a light tapping at her cheek, as if asking her to wake but too afraid to cause more hurt. She wanted to tell whoever it was that they couldn't hurt her anymore than she already was.

She cracked her eyes open as she was picked up in one quick movement, her head rushing at the feeling. Darkly tanned skin and hair was all she could see, and her forehead pressed against an impossible warm neck, the pulse strong against her own skin. She felt something moving as he walked, knocking against her hip and his thigh before bouncing out again. A gun, maybe, her mind supplied. It would account for the popping.

The light from the medical wing nearly blinded her, and she groaned against the pain in her eyes.

"Easy, Princess," that voice said, shushing her as it went. "I've got you." The quick patter of footfalls was nearly deafening in the silence, and the voice that followed was loud.

"Oh, God, Clarke." The voice paused, as if stuck on what it was going to say next. "Do you need help with her?"

"I've got it, Spacewalker," said the man who carried her. "Just get Abby ready. I'm taking her up now. She can't wait."

"Maybe I should bring Abby down here; she's going to need the supplies here." No. No. No, her mind ricocheted. Not here. Not anymore. She forced her eyes open, blinking against the lights and raising her head enough to run her forehead against the jaw and chin of the man that carried her. Finn stared at her, wide eyed and blinking, a few paces off. "Clarke," he said.

"Get me out of here," she managed, but the words were hard to understand even to her own ears.

"You heard the lady." She sighed and let her head drop back down to the shoulder that supported her. Finn must have run off, because he was gone in the next moment, as the man laid her down on one of the hospital gurneys. She tried to clutch at the fabric of his t-shirt, but he pulled away easily. "I've got you," he assured, and she let herself be left on the bed a few long minutes. When he returned, she made her eyes open, focus, concentrate.

"Saved by Bellamy Blake," she managed before she had to close her eyes and let her head fall back. "Thank-you."

"Always," he said, and in the next minute, she was being lifted again. She lost consciousness before the cold medical lights faded behind her eyelids.


	2. Rise of a Phoenix

When Clarke woke up again, it was under a muted sort of light, different from the harsh whites of medical, and for a moment, she panicked. It had all been a fever dream. She'd had them before. Her hemoglobin would drop too low, her entire blood volume dangerously diminished, and her body would spike a fever in retaliation, trying to work overtime to fix what had been done to it. Once she'd dreamt of her mother, another time, her father. She'd had dreams about Finn and the Arc and giving in to Wallace. She'd never dreamt of Bellamy before, which was the only thing that kept her in the next few minutes.

There was IV tubing in the crook of her left elbow. She'd grown so familiar to the feel of the catheter in place that she didn't need her eyes to tell her that. They were slow to adjust to the low light anyway, and she found herself blinking up at a dark grey metal ceiling. It was wrong. In the harvesting room, there had been a dark grey concrete, but none of this metal, the shine of it, even the smell of it.

She drew a long, steadying breath. Engine oil. None of the biological waste that was the harvest room, none of the sweat or blood that made up a clinical box made for inhuman acts. It was hard, putting that thought together. Her mind was dandelion fluff, light and airy and fuzzed just enough to be swept up in the wind of nothingness to flutter along a few moments.

The next thing it landed on was the gurney she lay on, hard and clinical, with a tattered and bloody blanket stretched across her chest. That was wrong. Even in the harvest room, everything had been clinical. A bloodied sleeve on one of the doctor's shirts was immediately replaced for something clean, sterile, perfect. The blanket wouldn't have been suffered to exist, even in that cell.

And she was warm. So very warm. She hadn't felt that way since she'd been hung upside down that first time, the blood draining from her, making her extremities cold as her body did what was necessary to keep blood flowing to the integral parts of her. Brain. Heart. Lungs. Liver. Kidneys. She knew the human circulatory system didn't have the capacity to shunt blood away from unnecessary systems, but it felt like it did each time her numb fingers or toes struck the metal bars of her cage or drug along the cement floor.

"I want no one in or out of here without my express permission." The voice was far away and wrapped in something gauzy and light, making it seem to float around her head before landing in her ears.

"Abby, we've got to face that the kids might have been too late." Another voice, this one male and strong, tempered with something like responsibility. Bellamy sounded like that sometimes, when he was weighted down with guilt. Bellamy-

"Bellamy," she said, finding her voice stronger than it had been in weeks. She pushed herself upright, failing for the most part and settled for rolling to one side, braced against the elbow that had the catheter in place. She followed that with her eyes, head swimming at the sudden movement, and found to connected to an IV bag, clean fluid drip, drip, dripping down at an alarming rate.

"Blake said she woke up when he pulled her out of there, Kane; she's going to wake up again." This time, the voice was clearer, familiar, tinged with command that she'd heard nearly every day of her before her father was floated. "I'm going to go sit with my daughter, Marcus. I suggest you help the rest of the kids settle in."

"Mom?" Clarke called, trying to make her voice carry. There was a tarp between them, light and billowing slightly in the breeze from outside of whatever they were in, and for a moment, she feared that her voice was weak enough to be caught up in that tarp and kept as hostage as she'd been.

"Clarke?" She hadn't needed to fear, because in the next moment, her mother was there, pushing through that canvass and taking hurried steps toward the gurney, tears running down her cheeks and lips screwed up to keep in a sob. "Oh, my baby girl." Her mother whispered into her ear, arms around her and taking the strain of her weight away from Clarke's shoulder.

Clarke couldn't speak. Couldn't move her arm from beneath her to hug her back, and the other was so very heavy and trapped beneath Abby's own octopus grip. Her mother didn't seem to mind though, because she was rocking them and shushing and muttering apologies and promises like it was the last thing she might ever do.

"Mom," she finally managed, voice cracking in the middle of the word. "Mommy."

"Shh. Shh. Shh. It's okay," Abby's voice murmured in her ear. If Clarke could have cried tears, she would have, but her body had given up on her lacrimal ducts when the dehydration started to become more severe. "I've got you, baby. I've got you." And she let herself believe that, because she didn't have the courage to call this a fever dream or a hallucination or anything else but reality.

"The others?" She did have the strength to ask that though, because there was no other question to ask.

"Everyone's safe, baby," Abby soothed, running her hands over Clarke's limp hair, smoothing it despite the fact that it lay there, lifeless against her skull on its own. Dehydration and malnutrition did that. They also exhausted her, but in that moment, after hearing that everyone was safe, alive, whole, relief did it as well. She sagged against her mother's hold, and the woman lowered her to the bed, a mother's watery smile in place.

"I'm sorry," Clarke found the strength to say a few minutes later. "I'm so-"

"It's okay, sweetheart," Abby said, just in the way she always had, when Clarke had done something worth apology. "I'm so very proud of you." And those words were heavy things, so heavy that they made her eyelids lead and drug her into a sleep the likes of which she hadn't had since before she woke up in Mount Weather.

-RP: When Shadows Come to Light-

Bellamy had carried her the entire way to the elevator. He'd held her there as the floors flashed by in lights. He'd kept her cradled to his chest the rest of the way through the compound and out into the sunlight to the back up team. Abby Griffin was part of that team, and the woman broke down in great, shaking sobs the moment she'd seen her daughter. Bellamy couldn't blame her.

He hadn't let himself look at the girl since he'd pulled her from the cage. In the shadows, he couldn't see much, but he felt it. The light threadiness of her pulse. The nearly weightlessness in his arms. It wasn't smart to carry a comrade across your arms for any great distance. The weight of them put strain on your arms and you grew wearier more quickly. The right way-the way he couldn't bring himself to carry the blonde-was over the shoulder in a fireman's carry.

Even as Abby Griffin's medical assistant took the girl from his arms and laid her out on the ground, assessing and fluttering, his arms did not ache. They should have, his mind supplied. He'd carried a lot of things that had made it so. He'd carried friends, prey, firewood. He'd carried gutted animals that weighed more than Clarke had against his biceps. Even the bag of medical supplies he'd grabbed at random, wildly praying that something-anything-would help, weighed more on his shoulder than she had.

They'd made a stretcher for her, because even with as long as it had taken to find the rest of the survivors and explain to them what had been happening, she still hadn't woken. He'd been one of the people to carry the head of that stretcher while Abby walked alongside, and still his arms had not ached. Still his brave princess had not opened her eyes again, and he was half relieved and half terrified by that.

There had been mutterings about taking the complex by force. The Arc survivors had the firepower. They had the manpower. As they retreated, the survivors of the one hundred on their heels, heads down in shame or looking back behind them in longing, he had to wonder if it wasn't the willpower they lacked. Evil had happened there, right under their noses, and yet...Bellamy caught more than one face with tears of mourning flowing down their cheeks.

Jasper had nearly made him want to strangle the kid. He'd been the most difficult to convince, and finally, it was the cages that did it. Bellamy had drug the wide eyed kid up the flights of stairs to medical and through the side door, shoving him on the floor in front of the cage that had once housed Clarke. Jasper had reached inside, picked up a pale blonde hair, and held it to the half-light. He'd dropped it as if burned, eyes flickering up to the rest of the cages, where some grounders still were caged. The one right above Clarke's cell had slumped down, fingers curling lifelessly around one of the bars.

Others reached out probing hands. Bellamy had dropped a bolt cutter at Jasper's feet then. It wasn't a moment he was proud of, but there were other things he had to do, other placed he'd rather be. Like back on the surface.

"Cut them out, ask them what your mountain men do here," he'd said to the wide eyed teen, and left him there, on the ground to either pick himself up, or crawl into the cage. Jasper had followed then back to Camp Jaha that night, and Bellamy was both proud of and frustrated with the young man as he walked along the stretcher, staring blankly down at Clarke.

That had been two nights ago. He'd helped ease the stretcher down in Abby's medical room and been forced out by the furious and stone faced version of Dr. Griffin. Outside the canvass flap that served as a door, he sat for the rest of the night. Finn was a constant presence, leaning against the far wall, and others had cycled through. Monty. Miller. Raven. Marcus Kane, even. When the morning came, Raven drug Finn away to get something to eat, and Monty of all people took his place against the wall.

"I didn't listen to her," Monty said after several long minutes of silence. Bellamy looked up at the kid to find him staring sullenly at the floor. "She said something was going on, and I just figured...she was slipping without something to defend us against, you know? That she needed that to remain in control of herself."

"Clarke's tougher than that," Bellamy said. It was true. Maybe he needed the constant threat, the danger, the action, to keep his place as their leader, but Clarke never had. She'd simply thrived in whatever environment they'd placed her in.

"I know," Monty said, shaking his head and giving a self depreciating laugh. "That's what's so bad about it. I know. I knew. I just didn't..." When it was clear that the younger man wasn't going to keep speaking, Bellamy sighed and took pity on him.

"You just didn't want to admit that it might all be smoke and mirrors," Bellamy said. Monty didn't nod or acknowledge what he said in any way. "Either did the other forty-seven of you. Don't take it out on yourself." Monty nodded at that and slipped into silence.

Midway through that second day, Monty left. Kane had come not long after and insisted that Bellamy put himself to use. There were raiding parties going out to the mountain to collect the supplies that they would need immediately, and while the Woods Clan wouldn't bother them-Anya had promised him that much-there were no promises that other clans might not be moving into the area to try and capitalize on their weakness.

Being back in Mount Weather made him nauseous. He purposefully avoided the medical bay, where most of the scavenging team had gone. The earlier teams had cleaned out the food stores, and while he was probably supposed to make a turn back through the cafeteria or the med bay, he couldn't bring himself to go either place. One was where they'd kept and tortured his blonde-headed co-leader and the other was the siren song that had made the rest of their people deaf to her concerns. He wasn't really sure which he disliked the most.

What he was sure of, though, was that he wasn't going either place. He found himself filling his pack with clothes, blankets, the odd personal weapon that was stowed away here or there. He grabbed a duffel bag from a closet and went about his business, continuing to pack and wander until he found himself in a dark office, the smell of oil paints thick in the air. The bag nearly full, he considered one of the wide shouldered suit jackets that hung in the corner before shaking himself of the notion. They weren't useful, not in the real world. So instead, he grabbed a thick tablet of blank paper and swept the oils and pastels and pencils into the top of the bag. They could be used for things other than art, thou he wondered if he'd have the heart to turn them over to Kane should Clarke be awake.

The hike back was a long one, and a day had passed since he'd last stuck his head into the medical bay to check if Clarke had woken. He relinquished the supplies save for what was left at the bottom of the duffel and ducked into the ship, past a few wandering Arc survivors and the canvass. The empty cot made a shiver of panic race up his back. It had only been three days since he'd found her, and that empty cot was damning.

"Clarke?" he called, eyes sweeping over the room at large. Maybe she'd woken up and had been moved to a different cot. The room was empty. "Clarke!" he called again, this time disappearing deeper into the ship, past yet another canvass and another, through different areas that had been devoted to food supplies or sleeping quarters or-

"Bellamy," Abby Griffin's voice caught him as he nearly ran through the sleeping quarters. She stood in front of him, clean and without the deep craigy lines around her mouth and eyes. "What's the matter?"

"Where's Clarke?" he asked, relaxing slightly. If something had happened to her daughter, Abby Griffin would be with her, now that there wasn't a stratosphere separating them. She didn't have the haunted, mourning look of someone that had just lost a family member, and a wry but there smile was quirking her mouth.

"Being stubborn," Abby said, eyes flickering up. There were upper levels of this as well, he knew, but the people hadn't been using them as much as the first. They had taken the most damage and were unstable. He sighed. Of course she was.

"I'll find her," he said simply, heading toward the stairwell.

"Blake," Abby called after him. He paused, looking over his shoulder at the woman, who had turned back to her own sleeping area. She turned toward him with two little pre-packaged containers, and as she handed them over, he winced. Space food. "Try to get her to eat that. She wouldn't take anything from me."

"Alright," he said, taking the packages and the canteen that she offered. He had become the sole authority on the stubborn obstinance of Clarke, he supposed.

When he found her, she was three floors up, leaning heavily against an exposed piece of steel. The hull had been torn wide open there, exposing all of the wiring and metal to the sunlight. She was on her own feet, which was a small miracle, but the pillar did most of the support. She didn't hear his boots on the metal, or if she did, she didn't comment. She just stood there, leak kneed and shaking, staring out at the sunlight.

"Ah," he said, clearing his throat to get her attention. "Didn't think about that."

"Think about what?" she asked, but there was none of the firmness of conversation that she normally had. None of the spark and spit of their usual back and forth.

"You wouldn't want to be inside," he said simply, moving to stand beside her. She was close enough to the ripped open edge that if she fell, she could end up spattered along the ground outside, and he didn't infiltrate a secret military base, make nice with the guards to gain access to firearms, and then blow his way through every door in the place just for her to decide she wanted to learn to fly.

"Hmm." She didn't really respond, and only kept looking out at the world. A bright world of color and breeze, with none of the clinical detachment that she'd been in for the past several months.

"Your mother's worried about you," he tried instead, which only earned him a quick look and the shadow of her normal glare. "She sent me up here with space rations, Princess. Did she forget we're on earth?"

"How'd you find me, Bellamy?" she asked instead, turning toward him with a boneless slouch.

"Sit down and I'll tell you," he offered. She complied, slipping down the beam with a gracelessness that he'd never seen in her. He sat across from her, back braced against another support column. They sat there a few minutes, both of their legs drawn half to their chests, feet invading each other's space for lack of room. Bellamy could have easily moved one way or the other, let them both stretch, but he had no desire in that moment, to be any further away from her than he was.

"Anya," he said simply, shrugging one shoulder. Clarke's eyes sharpened at that and flickered up to his face. "She snuck into camp at night, knocked me over the head and somehow got me out of Kane's lock up. I woke up bound and gagged with her sitting a few feet off. She told me about Mount Weather, about you. I'm sorry it took so long."

"Don't," was all she said in response to that. "She told you where to find us?"

"She felt guilty, I think. She said you got her out into some tunnels but that she left you there." He'd wanted to kill the grounder when she'd made that confession, but he didn't need to tell Clarke that, not now anyway, not after he squelched the desire. Kane had declared it too dangerous of a mission, and he'd quickly found a new target for his hatred.

"The others were happier there," she said simply. "They were safe and fed."

"And living a lie," Bellamy said sternly. "No one would have wanted to stay if they'd known."

"Maybe, maybe not," she said, staring back out into the day. "Saw you when they brought you in, you know." And if that didn't force all the air from his lungs, nothing ever would. "Wallace wanted information on the Arc survivors. The types of weapons, numbers, weaknesses. I was being...punished, I think, for not telling him. He said they'd brought three of you in, and I saw-"

"Finn and Murphy and me," Bellamy said, cutting her off. Yeah, that had been all of it at first. Abby and a few of the others had known where the three young men had gone to. They'd made a plan, and Abby would stay behind, riling up the remaining Arc survivors until they followed. Then it would be a waiting game, until Murphy or Finn or Bellamy managed to blow the doors wide open and let radiation sweep through the compound. Anya hadn't been lying. It only took a few long minutes before the screaming started. After that, it had been a matter of time and keeping the vents open. Bellamy couldn't bring himself to care about the dead.

"I have to admit, Murphy shocked me," she said, a ghost of her smile on her old smile on her lips.

"Shocked me a few times too," Bellamy said. "He's the one that found the...room, first. He had a nice stay in medical for some of the wounds the grounders inflicted on him. He's still an ass, but..."

"But he's our ass," Clarke said for him. "He's one of us."

"Yeah," Bellamy agreed. "He is."

"I haven't seen anyone but my mom and you yet," she said next. "I think, maybe I'd like to see Finn and Murphy." Bellamy nodded, dropping the food packets in front of her before forcing himself to his feet. If the princess didn't want to talk, then he wasn't going to sit there unwanted. "Later, please."

"I'll send them up-"

"I didn't thank you," she said, eyes flickering purposefully back to the ground where he'd sat and back up to him. He took the message and slid back to the ground. It shouldn't have felt as good as it did, sitting there.

"You don't have to, princess."

"I do," she countered. He'd seen that look on her face before, as the pair of them leaned back against a tree. When she told him that she forgave him. That completely lost little expression that meant her world had twisted sideways yet again. "I was ready to die there, Bellamy."

"Too stubborn to die."

"No, I wasn't," she said. "If I'd have had the strength, at the end, I'd have used my own clothes to hang myself." He bit down viciously on his bottom lip, trying to erase the memory of swinging by his own neck from his mind. Of the princess coming to save him from that fate, from Murphy. The image of her in her little cell, shirt wrapped around her neck and face pale, nearly made him vomit.

"You didn't though," he said. "You're out."

"Because of you," she said, giving him a half smile. "Thank you, Bellamy."

"Just don't repay me by hanging yourself off the station," he said, pushing himself to his feet. "I'll send Finn up first, keep everyone else out." She made a little humming noise and turned her attention back to the open space outside the station. He found Finn a few minutes later and sent the Spacewalker up to her before sitting down at the end of the stairs. He was almost pleased when she dismissed him after only a few minutes. Murphy was even up there longer, after Finn went to find him. They had more to talk about, he supposed. He knew what it was like to be a prisoner, even if they'd both been held captive by completely opposite people.

-RP: When Shadows Come to Light-

It had been two weeks. Two weeks and Clarke had done little more than glare moodily at anyone that visited her, moved between her bed and the third floor, and drive her mother to worry. Which was all fine and well, except it was about to drive Bellamy out of his own mind. She'd gained back some of the weight she'd lost, but only because of Abby's IVs and the space nutrition packs that only Bellamy could seem to command her to eat.

The final straw had been Jasper, red eyed and frowning, as he'd stormed out of the drop ship, apparently unforgiven for some sin that he'd committed while in Mount Weather. Monty had ghosted after him, face lined with worry, and shot Bellamy a pleading look. They'd all been doing that, as if he was still in charge of anything anymore. As if he could somehow take away months of torment and breathe the will to live back into his ex-co-leader.

Stomping on his way up the stairs, if only to convey his mood and take out some frustration before he had to talk to her. She had a blanket this time, at least, and a pillow he suspected she'd stolen from the living quarters.

"Come on," he said firmly, ripping the blanket off of her and gesturing her upward.

"What?" she asked, annoyance clear in her tone. That was good, he figured. At least she was annoyed, if nothing else.

"It's time to stop hiding," he said simply, glaring down at her, daring her to deny that she'd been avoiding everyone for weeks. She didn't, and instead, she turned on her side, leaving him to stand there and stare down at her. "Really?" he asked. "Fine."

She was heavier than the last time he carried her, but this time, he heaved her over one shoulder in a fireman's carry and ignored the sharp elbows and knees as they thrashed. Her tongue was sharper though, damning him to burn in a special hell, calling him names that should have made her blush. He only smiled though, because it was the most life she'd shown since he'd carried her out of Mount Weather.

"Damnit, Bellamy, let me down!" she raged, and as his feet made contact with the soil outside, he complied, dumping her in a heap at his feet. She sprang up, in his face and angry, cheeks read. "Who the hell do you think you are?"

"The only person not afraid of you," he said, holding his ground. He'd let her rage at him. He'd let her hit him. Hell, he might stand there as she tore him down to the parts that made him up if it meant that she did something else besides stare out of the crashed station.

"Because the great Bellamy Blake isn't afraid of anything!" she said, squinting against the sun.

"That's right," he said, nodding. "Because you know first hand I'm not afraid of anything, princess." That took the wind from her for a moment, and she deflated, a guilty look crossing over her face. He was afraid of a lot of things. Lately, it had been mostly of waking up to hear she'd taken the last step out from that third floor and ended up in pieces on the ground.

"Then what gives you the right to-"

"To make you stop hiding? To make you get out of bed and face it? What gave you the right to tell me that these kids needed me, when all I wanted to do was run?" He'd said it before he realized he was going to, and the angry look on her face faded to a quiet thoughtfulness. Finally, she gave him a sheepish smile and looked around the camp. People had been staring, and the second her eyes flickered over them, sending them scattering back to their business.

She sighed and rolled her head on her neck, watching as a few familiar faces waved at them, smiles wide and excited. A few faces turned away quickly, trying to put distance between themselves and Clarke. He'd have to have some words with them, later, when things had settled.

"I haven't been a very brave princess, have I?" she asked, shoulders slumped.

"No, you haven't," he said, taking a step to stand beside her. He bumped her shoulder with his arm, giving her a little smile. "But you're starting to be."

She nodded and took a deep breath. She was still smaller than she'd been, shadow eyed and slumped, but she squared her shoulders and forced a grim smile on her lips. He fought his own smile, trying to keep the amusement from his features. He watched as she steeled herself, that smile lightening just a touch as she took a step out from the shadow of the station wreckage and into the day.

"Brave princess," he murmured, not bothering to fight the smile on his lips.


End file.
